Like this:

Related

68 responses to “Minor Fixes”

Please guys, can we do something about the font. I know you work really hard, and as a web designer I objectively understand why you have done it, but it’s physically uncomfortable for myself and a lot of other readers to use the site now. I had to go dig through my PM box to find a PM from months ago to cite in a government essay (long story) and I had a pounding headache afterwards. I’m not very demanding when it comes to interfaces because I have great eyesight, but something about my computer makes that really hard to read, and I’d rather not have to screw with my entire computer’s display for one site.

Please? Either change it back to Verdana, allow me to choose Verdana from a list, let it go to my default browser font, or something. Arial just doesn’t work.

While I don’t think seem to have as many problems with it as cindella above me, I do agree wholeheartedly that Verdana was a better choice. Arial is way too crowded; it just seems like the words are scrunched together for some reason. It actually hurts my eyes a bit to read at times

Being able to choose which site font you want would be the best of both worlds, definitely.

There’s the issue that it keeps logging off players and forcing them to log in… if me or my friends are about to post in the forums or stories…. well it erases everything after it forces us to log in again!!

Is there a reason why previously read and newly read links/stories are no longer showing up as viewed links? Used to be if I clicked and viewed a link that link would turn purple, but now it stays blue as if I’d never clicked on it.

Thank you for fixing this – is there any way that it can be changed so that the arrow also changes colors? Yesterday I was reading something and only realized a new chapter was added because I went back to reread the whole piece – it used to be that the arrow would go purple after reading, and if it was blue again, I would know that the author updated

Lagomorph

08/07/2012 at 11:40 am

One thing Ajaa mentioned in the “Search & Beta Tweaks” entry is something a few of us forgot to point out.

Why were the series in the Categories sorted by most fics? There’s no need for that. Searching for a particular series alphabetically is intuitive and the most logical thing to do, and it’s what the majority of us are used to since grade school. Having them sorted by “most fics” just doesn’t make any sense at all and it feels really counter-intuitive.

I just rather have it alphabetical by default, no need for the “All” button.

ShikiKira

08/07/2012 at 12:06 pm

The search engine is finally returning stories that have been recently updated, but when I put it to sort by update none of them are in order. For example you would expect the most recently updated story to be first one the list, instead I have a story that hasn’t been updated for a month listed at the top.

So question – when I’m writing in the post reply forum boxes, I can’t quote anything unless I go back and I edit my post. It’s getting kind of tedious – I’m using Google Chrome as my browser and I’m wondering if that might be the issue? Not sure, but the quoting problem is starting to drive me nuts, haha.

I’m also a Chrome user. I click the “HTML” button in the forum reply box after typing the post and pasting the quotes, click “update” without changing anything, then quote. It seems to work on Chrome v21 and should tide you over until it is properly fixed.

Hey I don’t know if this is my browser, or computer, or what, but external profile links aren’t working for me. The hyperlink is created, and the popup appears when you click it, but there’s nothing to confirm it with. There’s just “You are about to visit an external website outside of FanFiction.Net. Please verify the link below and proceed with caution.”, and then the divider, but nothing but white space underneath. Nobody has said anything, so I’m assuming it’s something on my end, but it’s not working for me…I’m using Google Chrome. It works on Firefox just fine, but I prefer Chrome, so I’m not sure what’s going on…

Also, small thing, the centering/links don’t seem to be enabled on the mobile version of the site. Do you think that could get fixed in the near future?

Thanks so much for all your hard work! These small fixes you’re doing every day are really appreciated :)

Thank you for all the hard work. I know it’s not easy trying to please everyone. :)

Anyways, I just had a question/request. I heard that once you create a community, you can’t delete it. I haven’t created a community yet (though I am thinking of it), but I was wondering if we can get an option to remove communities so that way, if authors don’t want to run it anymore, it could be removed from the author’s profile. I would feel more comfortable to create a community this way. Could it be made possible? Thanks!

I second this request. I have a community that’s been sitting around empty for a couple of years now, since removing all the stories is the next-best thing to deleting the actual community, but it would be great if I could delete the community itself. I’m sure there are a lot of empty/unused communities that are just taking up space and cluttering the site because the authors can’t remove them.

I have the same problem too. Supposedly, there’s a remove section where we can delete communities but I haven’t been able to find it and thus unable to delete my community. It’s just been sitting there since 2009, empty.

I once deleted my community by copying a link to a community management page in my settings and changing ‘_edit.php’ to ‘_remove.php’ and it worked. But that was some 2 years ago, so I’m not sure if it still works – I can’t check. You could try going to https://www.fanfiction.net/community/c2m_tab_remove.php – it could work. The link seems to be valid, but it tells me that ‘This feature is only active when you have created a C2 community.’ Worth giving a try.

Well I guess if it worked for someone else (like below), then I suppose that’s a temporary fix. Thanks for the help! :)

Green Dye

01/26/2013 at 5:01 am

THANK YOU! I don’t see why they removed the regular remove tab… I was beginning to lose hope that the communities could be deleted. Thank you, thank you, and thank you again.

Heather

08/07/2012 at 2:56 pm

Hi Guys,

I don’t know if i missed this in a previous update, or if its from this update, but on the Favorite Stories page, i am missing my ‘All’ button. I don’t mind having my stories in several pages, but i would like to see an all function again so when im looking for something, i have a chance of finding it.

I agree with the new font/size being an issue, but I’m glad to see all the other fixes.

One complaint I’ve seen (and have myself) regards the forums — maybe make a way so that locked threads are displayed below the active ones, at the bottom of the forum page? It would make navigation a lot simpler and cleaner.

I’ll throw in one more suggestion for consideration, and then I promise I’ll pipe down. I can definitely see this going either way, but thought it might be interesting to discuss.

I am on another site that allows the author to publicly respond to reviews. So, basically, for each review you can post a response that appears right under the review. The potential downside is that it could lead to people just responding defensively to poor reviews. But, the upside, which in my opinion is much greater, is you can really see a nice dialogue develop between authors and their reviewers. For stories that are truly great, I love reading through the reviews to see the author’s thoughts. For example, someone might say, “I like how you went this way with the relationship instead of x way” and the author might respond by saying, “Yes, I considered doing x, but thought it was out of character, and I wanted to show that the character responds with y and z before they get there” or whatever.

Not only does it provide interesting insight into the author’s working process, but it really encourages richer reviews, and rewards people for writing them (and shows others that if they provide a thoughtful review they might get an interesting, thoughtful response). I think it really fosters a sense of community and interaction with authors that distinguishes fanfic from other kinds of writing. I know right now you can respond to some people by PM, but the other reviewers don’t get the benefit of those comments, and also don’t see the benefit of writing a thoughtful review. Additionally, many people review as Guest (whether they are logged out by accident or design) or seem to have PMs turned off and don’t know it, and this would allow responses and hopefully eliminate the tendency of some authors to try to respond to reviewers or answer questions in the author notes at the beginning of a chapter.

Anyway, thought I’d throw that out there in case you get bored in amongst the million other fixes you are working on. ;-)

I know I posted already about the arrows for the chapters not turning purple – but I have a suggestion for the blog – is there any way for people to “like/agree” about a post? I feel like a lot of us are having the same issues and instead of getting multiple comments that say the same thing, people can just mark the comment to show that they would say the same thing (it would also make scrolling through comments easier)

You can add the story or the author to your favourites list, or put the story on alert – these signs show the author that someone is enjoying their stories. :)

Over at archiveofourown.org , they have the feature to leave ‘kudos’ on a story that can be left by anonymous users or logged-in users. FF.Net also gives links to sharing stories on other social sites down at the bottom of stories.

For the record, I don’t think rating systems for fanfic sites are a good idea because of the possibility of hurt feelings and of people abusing them (especially in small fandoms where the numbers can be skewed heavily by one bad apple). I’ll also be just as happy whether or not FF.Net someday installs a kudos system or a likes system or some equivalent – just because AO3 has some feature doesn’t mean that Fanfiction.net ought to follow suit.

Kudos are an accessibility issue for some readers, who might not have the ability to express that they liked a story any other way, or might be in a time-pressed or technology-limited situation where they can’t leave a comment. It can help to think of the kudos not as a substitute for a comment, but as a substitute for no acknowledgement of your story at all. I haven’t come across stats that seemed very convincing of one or the other, but many people on AO3 choose to leave both kudos and comments as a way of ‘extra’ appreciation of a story. Writers on AO3 can also choose to turn off being notified of any kudos if they don’t enjoy them.

Also, FF.Net already has a system for people to express they read your story without leaving a comment–the favourites and author alert system. I love comments too, but it also brightens my day to see that someone with an account on the site is following or favouriting me.

Like you, I think that comments are great, and they’re certainly more expressive than favourites/alerts/kudos/etc. :)

yemi hikari

08/08/2012 at 1:54 pm

@Blue-Inked Frost – The abuse gets worse when the fandom is the “new” trend for the younger members of the site to. AO3 may be lucky that most of the younger writers don’t yet know about it and aren’t looking for invites. I say this having been ganged up by a cliche of these members before in one of the fandoms because they didn’t want any negative reviews.

The AO3 doesn’t have ratings, although I believe Skyehawke and MediaMiner do. There is no way to abuse kudos, other than by faking your own kudos: either you leave kudos or nothing at all, and the writer won’t know that you didn’t click. There are also ways to abuse review systems, such as by flaming or contributing to your own review counts anonymously, as you know.

yemi hikari

08/08/2012 at 10:26 pm

@ Blue-Innked Frost – I still think it is possible to abuse the kudos system. I’m actually thinking of a very particular scenario though. A few years ago I critiqued fanfics in a very small fandom that had just become popular with preteens and young teenagers.

The younger writers gained a cliche mentality. First, I think many of them didn’t really “read” other peoples stories but gushed praising reviews over them just so they could get more reviews. If you didn’t leave reviews on other peoples fanfics, you wouldn’t get reviewed yourself. If you left critique you were pretty much ostrasized from the rest of the group. I couldn’t even tell one fanfic writer that I liked the story of that their bad grammar and writing technique detracted from their story without recieving backlash in reviews they left later on. For a pretty small fandom it grew in size pretty fast too because of the cliche mentality. There were around twenty to thirty people in this clique plus the tag along followers and what the “group” wanted was what everyone else went along with.

Now, here is how I see this particular group abusing the kudos system. “If you leave a kudo on mine, I’ll leave a kudo on yours. However, don’t leave kudos on so and sos fanfics because she left a flame on some peoples stories.” And mind you, what I left wasn’t flames, but neither were some of the other kids who were singled out and were simply trying to help. Imagine now if a group of twenty to thirty people plus the people who followed them were to kudos the “in” fanfics, but not kudos the “out” fanfic. You and I wouldn’t be able to make up the difference on some of these younger kids fanfics and a form of internet bullying similar to the bullying that occurs because of cliches at school was going on. I’m honestly glad that I can report some of the reviews I saw back then now, because some of what they said in the reviews… they may not have been harrassing the writer, but they were harrasing other members of the site.

A kudos system would be better then a like/dislike system for this type of group however. It’s one thing to withold kudos, but to purposefully set an entire group that is twenty to thirty strong on one person and make it so that they have tons of dislikes. I can see the other kids saying, “well obviously nobody likes that person”. One of the young writers quit the site after these kids had their way.

Not leaving kudos is not abuse, just like not leaving follows or not leaving favourites or not leaving reviews is not abuse. Cliques are human nature and can be unfortunate human nature. Emails or reviews telling someone that they’re being ostracised are abusive, but choosing not to leave feedback is simply that. For “likes” too, I meant a system where only likes are possible, so that maybe stories with fewer likes are ignored, but nobody can skew anyone’s ratings with dislikes not left for honest reasons.

Miggy

08/08/2012 at 2:36 am

First, english is not my maternal language, so please don’t mind the grammar.

That said.

Please.

Writing is tedious.

It takes time. It takes work. Be respectful of the writers. It’s true we do write because we like it and it’s a hobby for most of us. But leaving a review is a reward for us. It’s the only reward we’d ever get. As amateur writers we’re not profiting from our writings. It’s for fun. While I appreciate that someone would fave my stories ( really ) , the rewarding feeling for me only comes from the review or critique a reader would take the time to write.

Why would I want a kudos? Just like you’re sending me a bone?

I’m a reader too. I can be lazy. Still, I tried to leave a few words now and then. I bookmark the stories I’ve read so I could leave a comment later when I’m too tired. Keep in mind, it takes hours to write one chapter of a story. Leaving a review as tedious as it can be is a way of aknowledging that. Some of us are students, some of us works already. Passion is guiding us. Please reward that.

I don’t need a bone. I need a review. I don’t want to think that people didn’t think that my work ( which took me hours ) was not worth the effort to be reviewed, so they’d leave me a bone. I’m a perfectionnist. It would drive me nuts, honestly.

Some people don’t even bother leaving reviews though because they don’t have time or whatever reason, so authors have no way of knowing if people even read the chapter. Rating and kudos would show the authors that people are reading.

yemi hikari

08/08/2012 at 1:56 pm

@ Dee… we already know people are reading because of the favorite and alert list. While a kudos system would allow anonymous readers a say, it would also be an encouragement not to sign up for their own account. Why does a lurker need to when they can just book mark their fanfics and kudos any fics they like?

If you’re talking about search results, often they’re set up just like search results for stories. Those don’t just give you the titles but also the fandoms and the summary. The search results for authors is doing the same thing for the profiles.

This is just a suggestion, i’m not posting to have people fight with me on my opinion, I would like is making an option to block all reviews from being placed on a certain user’s stories. Let user’s decide if they want to recieve any reviews or no reviews at all. This would stop people who don’t have an account and those who do have an account from leaving a review. These days it seems people are just leaving flames and I would rather block all reviews from comining then having flames on my story that I can’t delete.

It won’t be “against” the rules, as some people call it, since we can already block non-users to review our stories and since we won’t be able to delete them if our stories can’t recieve reviews. Not everyone goes on this site to get reviews and I know i’m not the only one who would rather stop recieving any reviews then get reviews that have no meaning but insult. If people won’t read stories unless they have reivews on them, then they won’t read the stories, there’s no lose to either parties. An author can’t tell why someone won’t read their stories and the reader just moves on to another story by other people’s opinons.

This option is a nice way for a writer to blacklist themselves with the rest of the fanfic community. It is bad enough that certain writers have garnered bad reputations for deleting entire fanfics and anoymous reviews simply because they didn’t like any negative being said. Blocking all reviewers alienates the entire community, not just those of us who give critique. People will then be forced to critique the fanfic through other means and the comments made will not be anywhere as nice compared to when the writer allowed reviews. On top of this, the writer will need to make doubly sure that their fanfics are compliant to the site rules. If a flamer can’t hit a writer via review, they’ll hit them via revenge flaming. Other people will block this person from reviewing any of their fanfics.

The other effect I see happening is a drop in the quality of work posted here. quizella doesn’t allow reviews and they’re the worst of the worst when it comes to quality control.

I’m going to have to ask how not allowing reviews respects the reviewer. If you can’t give an answer to that then you can’t argue that it isn’t against the site rules. It also breaks the second respect review by not allowing the reviewers a chance to respect the writer. So, in a way this is worse then the suggestion to allow people to delete signed reviews. Also, at this point in time we can’t block non-users from reviewing, we can only delete their reviews and moderate them as they come in.

If a person doesn’t come to this site to get reviews, then why are they here? Why does a person post something to the net if it isn’t to get attention for their writing either because they want praise or because they want to improve their writing. Both of which require reviews do they not? If a person’s point for posting is for archival purposes then they honestly shouldn’t be caring about reviews even if they are flames. And if they really don’t want comments on the stuff they are archiving, there are other ways one can archive their work that doesn’t garner public attention.

If you’ve gotten a flame on your story, keep reporting it until the site admins remove it. Keep in mind too that just because the review says something you don’t like doesn’t mean it is a flame. A flame attacks the writer and actual people, not the writing itself.

On sites such as Livejournal you can post your stories and disable comments in your own blog, and on AO3 you can choose to ‘orphan’ stories, which means that you are no longer listed as the author and don’t receive any further comments.

But I can see the argument yemi raises that posting a story means you have chosen to engage with the community. You can report abusive reviews and block particular users from commenting on your stories, but you allow people to respond to your work.

I don’t think it’s polite to review people in ways they didn’t ask for; it’s mannerly to respect people’s requests. Reviewers can always share their thoughts on the story in their own space, not the author’s. You could always put an A/N at the bottom of your story that you’d rather not receive feedback or rather not receive concrit, and hopefully most people will respect that.

I suggest not doing that. Most of the people I know who leave concrit to help writers grow will review whether they see “no concrit” or not. The reason is, while it is polite to respect someones request, this only works for requests that are seen as being respectful. For example, a slash writer will not respect a request asking them to stop writing slash.

Also, this is a great way to make yourself a target of a flamer. Most people who say no to concrete do so because they don’t want their feelings hurt. Flamers know this and will test the water to see if they get a reaction. If they get a reaction of any kind they will continue to find ways to flame the person in these particular circumstances.

The story and review space is the writer’s: comments go directly to them. Asking reviewers politely to avoid concrit might result in less feedback, but that’s the tradeoff a writer chooses. This is not remotely the same thing as asking another writer not to write their own stories. The writer could be insecure, the writer could feel they’d rather learn by practice, the writer has personal health issues, the writer is already aware of many of the problems in the fic, the fic is old, and so on. It doesn’t matter. If you want to be polite, respect the writer when you post directly to them, or else choose to review on your own blog. If you don’t want to be polite, don’t moan when other people notice.

Thankfully, flamers can be reported for abuse and banned from commenting or private messaging. Personally, I like concrit, and recently I even chose to leave a one-line flame up on one of my stories that said only “hate this”. I also tend to be a bit nitpicky, sadly, and so I’m afraid I wouldn’t necessarily take concrit that was spelt as ‘concrete’ very seriously, but of course we all make typos. Perhaps especially when we try to point out others’ issues!

yemi hikari

08/09/2012 at 10:58 pm

Except can a writer really call the review section on their story “my space”? It’s the space of the readers as much as it is the space of the writer. Others have pointed out, if the writing is bad then they would rather know from a review there then having to actually read the fanfic themselves. This includes older works too.

As for writers with insecurities, only getting positive reviews is detrimental. I’m not talking about their wriing here either, but their ego getting shattered even worse when conrit finally does come in. Let’s say one of them does ask for no conrit and because of that people who leave concrit leave them alone. What do you think is going to happen to them when a flame comes their way? The situation is much, much worse.

There are also people who will report people who say “positive reviews only” and “no concrit”. The site guidelines we all sign says that not all the reviews will praise the work and that we’re supposed to respect that, which asking for “no concrit” does not. Some may argue that the rule right afterwords means that the person giving concrit has to respect the writer, but not telling a writer the truth is seen as not being respectful. Other sites don’t have as strict rules about recieving and giving reviews.

Do you think it’s charitable to do something an author has asked people not to do, on the grounds that someone else might do something even “worse” to them later?

The site rules warn against abusing reviewers, and rightly too, but there is no rule against making requests for certain types of reviews. (“I won’t update unless you give me 5 reviews”–entitled and manipulative, but not against site rules. “I’d especially appreciate feedback on the pacing of chapter 2″–not against site rules. “No concrit please”–not against site rules.) So reporting authors like that is silly.

Reviews on stories go directly to the fanauthor, so this is not like the situation where consumers of professionally published works for sale can and should share honest reviews on Amazon. For that reason I think the polite thing to do is consider the author more than the other readers. You can always describe a story in harsher terms in your own space where they don’t have to look, much like pro authors don’t have to look at Amazon. There are also ways to phrase things tactfully, so that even if the author overreacts other readers only see a polite review that expresses a well-supported opinion and respects the author. ;) Please note that I’m talking about politeness, which I don’t think is something that any site’s rules can truly mandate.

I can no longer sort my Favorites by Catagory anymore. When I’m looking for a specific genre, it’s pretty hard without the category sorting. Did the new updates stop that? Is it possible to get it back?

I think that we should add oc character search for all stories on fan fiction. I mean hello! People have plenty of original characters and their characters have no respect if they don’t have a in charcter search!!

Hello. I am having a problem. A Forum I’m part of is saying i don’t have permission to post. But no one there banned me and the Admin is just as confused as I am. He can’t access the Management section it says he is getting a Type 2 error when he tries.